Jezebel’s Top 25 Stories of 2025

Not every year can be gorgeous and exciting, and 2025 certainly was neither of those things. There was a lot of bad news, some truly horrific news, bad news that made you wanna barf, and the kind of bad news that convinces you we all died in 2020 and this is actually hell! But even the darkest night skies have a few stars. The Grammys were delightful, Zohran Mamdani was declared New York City’s new mayor hours before midnight, and We Love You, Bunny—Mona Awad’s highly anticipated follow-up to her 2019 cult hit Bunny—was fantastic.

As for you, our beautiful, brilliant readers, you loved reading about MAGA turning on their own, tech billionaires being whiny little bitches, and Hugh Grant napping. Here are the 25 Jezebel stories of 2025 that you read, shared, and clicked on the most.

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25. Trying—and Failing—to Make Sense of Meghan Markle’s 2016 Influencer Shtick

By Nora Biette-Timmons

I know I’m dangerously close to echoing a right-wing tabloid columnist and verging on some perverted Meghan Markle horseshoe theory. I also know “princess” isn’t even a viable career path for anyone these days. She had the only open position, though, and she gave it up to be one of countless people to talk about “seed funding” on a podcast and photograph staged lifestyle content.

24. I Think We All Have Just Have a Few Questions

By Alise Morales

People confirms that B.J. Novak and Delaney Rowe are dating. So, once again, we’re forced to remind ourselves that Novak and Mindy Kaling haven’t dated since 2007—and that he’s just her kids’ godfather and “Uncle FoFo.”

23. MAGA Turns on Amy Coney Barrett for Siding With Starving Children

By Kylie Cheung

Appealing to the consciences of conservative Supreme Court justices isn’t going to save us in the even more unhinged era of Trump 2.0. But even a broken clock is right twice a day—and on Wednesday, conservative Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts sided with the three liberal justices to reject the Trump administration’s plea to withhold billions of dollars in foreign aid. And now, all hell is breaking loose in MAGA world.

22. Sounds Like RFK Jr. Could Be the Next Trump Ally to Get a Divorce…

By Audra Heinrichs

On Tuesday, Page Six reported that Kennedy and his third wife, Cheryl Hines, are one of the many Trump-allied couples going through it right now. In June, Rep. Max Miller reached a divorce agreement with his wife of three years, Emily Moreno (the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno), and Senator Angela Paxton recently announced that she filed for divorce from her husband, Texas Attorney General and anti-abortion freak Ken Paxton. Perhaps divorce in MAGA world comes in threes?

21. Big Week for MAGA Influencers & Republicans Accused of Child Sexual Abuse & Soliciting Minors

By Kylie Cheung

What a week it’s been. I can’t wait to watch Republicans respond to their own politicians and members of their own base allegedly committing acts of child sexual abuse by… ah, yes. Doubling down on trying to ban gender-affirming care for trans kids.

20. Only an Idiot Would Think We Need Anti-Abortion Democrats

By Susan Rinkunas

Meanwhile, Klein’s claim that people alarmed at the direction of the country need to compromise on abortion access ignores the reams of evidence that prove how restricting abortion rights goes hand-in-hand with authoritarian governance. As his own employer reported in 2021, “Curbs on women’s rights tend to accelerate in backsliding democracies, a category that includes the United States, according to virtually every independent metric and watchdog.” We have state abortion bans in this country because our government is no longer responsive to the will of the people. Further capitulating now will only make things worse, you simpleton.

19. Don’t Ask Walton Goggins About Aimee Lou Wood

By Audra Heinrichs

Given his watershed year in film and television, Walton Goggins has pretty much been on a press tour for the last five months. As a result of that fact, it’s safe to say he’s likely feeling fatigued by now. And in a new interview with the London Times aptly titled, “Walton Goggins: Aimee Lou Wood? I’m not gonna have that conversation,” it’s starting to show.”

18. Trump Effectively Greenlights Anti-Abortion Violence

By Kylie Cheung

At the end of last week, likely hoping his actions would go unnoticed, Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists who were convicted for not only illegally barricading abortion clinics, but in some cases, violently attacking patients and clinic staff, as well as stealing aborted embryos and fetal tissue. In a statement shared with Jezebel, Center for Reproductive Rights President Nancy Northrup called the pardons a “get-out-of-jail-free card inviting anti-abortion extremists to step up their attacks on reproductive health clinics with impunity.”

17. Underemployed Actor Won’t Condemn Bigot Who Keeps Hiring Him

By Alise Morales

Tom Felton won’t let backlash to his support for J.K. Rowling stop him from supporting J.K. Rowling—or keep him from cashing in on his Draco Malfoy bag. Last week, Felton announced he’d be making his Broadway debut and reprising the role of Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. (Recession indicator? Methinks yes…) As with anything Potter-related these days, fans and former fans immediately hopped online to discuss him working with (for?) Rowling again while knowing she uses her considerable wealth to further anti-trans causes.

16. 10 Spine-Chilling Stories That Will Make Your Skin Crawl

Here are the winners of Jezebel’s 2025 Scary Story Contest. Read at your own risk!

15. We Are Living in the Stupidest Possible Timeline

By Kylie Cheung

Senate confirmation hearings for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick to head the Department of Homeland Security, were always going to be stupid. I just didn’t know it would reach “sex change operations for illegal immigrants” levels of stupid.

14. In Defense of Hugh Grant Falling Asleep at Wimbledon

By Claire Guinan

Napping, if nothing else, is a radical act of peace.

13. The Life of a…Tradwife?

By Lauren Tousignant

I’m not looking for a thesis from Taylor; she can make all the poppy, poorly written glitter pen albums she wants. But it sucks that she now has not one, but two songs that Harrison Butker—Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs teammate—can conceivably reference in another men’s rights rant the next time he tells women graduating from college that the greatest thing they could be is a wife, mother, and supporter of their husband’s career.

12. Moscow’s Latest Sucker Is a Texas Man Who Wanted to Escape ‘Woke America’

By Danielle Han

The father of three moved his family to Russia after his daughter “heard about lesbians from a classmate.” He’s since been sent to the front lines.

11. It Must Suck to Be Such a Whiny Little Bitch

By Lauren Tousignant

On Friday, Joe Rogan released his latest podcast episode featuring Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Facebook, now Meta, who’s recently made a somewhat whiplash-inducing pivot from being a vocal critic of Trump to becoming another ass-kissing sycophant. In their nearly three-hour interview, Zuckerberg talked to Rogan about his passion for hunting invasive pigs in Hawaii and complained about how companies just aren’t masculine enough anymore.

10. Epstein Victim Literally Wrote: ‘I Dont Want to Come Early to Find Trump in Your House’

By Danielle Han

The guns! They’re smoking! Again!

9. Elon Musk Is Melting Down Because His Baby DOGE Minions Are Being ID’ed

By Kylie Cheung

The most viral headline of the second Trump era, published by the Guardian in January, reads, “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down—I just didn’t expect them to be such losers.” And now that we know the identities of Elon Musk’s government wrecking crew, “DOGE” (the Department of Government Efficiency), I can add that I didn’t expect them to be so young and creepy-looking. Or, for that matter, that they would include a 19-year-old Northeastern University freshman with a haircut that my Jezebel colleague Susan Rinkunas likened to “fascist broccoli.”

8. Sounds Like Orlando Bloom Also Didn’t Support Katy Perry’s Space Mission

By Audra Heinrichs

There are challenging moments in every couple’s relationship—wardrobe choices that can’t be reckoned with, habits that might impel one to inflict serious harm upon the other, and decisions that simply can’t be defended. Thanks to a new Daily Mail exclusive, we now know that when it comes to the rumored demise of Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom’s relationship, it seems the latter was the cause.

7. Welp, Carrie Underwood Officially Comes Out as MAGA

By Lauren Tousignant

Underwood will perform “America the Beautiful,” with the Armed Forces Chorus and the United States Naval Academy Glee Club. Obviously, Republicans have used “America the Beautiful” for their campaigns and rallies for decades, but I still want to quickly mention that the original poem, which inspired the song, was written by Katharine Lee Bates, a journalist, poet, and author who was a professor at Wellesley College in the late 1800s. Bates was also a social activist who fought for women, immigrants, and workers’ rights, spoke out against American isolationism, and broke with the Republican Party in 1924 to endorse Democratic candidate John W. Davis—because the GOP was against the U.S. joining the League of Nations following World War I. I’m sure Bates would be thrilled to hear that Underwood is singing her lyrics about America being for everyone at the swearing-in of an orange, wannabe dictator.

6. 75-Year-Old Democrat Who Beat AOC for Key Role Resigns After 4 Months

By Kylie Cheung

Reminder that in December, Nancy Pelosi, from her hospital bed, whipped the vote for Gerry Connolly—who’d recently been diagnosed with throat cancer—against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

5. John Fetterman’s Wife Reportedly Told Staff She Was at a ‘Breaking Point’

By Kylie Cheung

A considerable portion of the article delves into Fetterman’s allegedly declining relationship with Gisele, who also became a political star during Fetterman’s Senate campaign, due to her progressive positions and social media savvy. The article describes tearful conversations between Gisele and Fetterman as she pleaded with him to reverse course on his support for Israel’s war crimes in the fall of 2023, to no avail. “They are bombing refugee camps. How can you support this?” a staffer recalled Gisele telling Fetterman in his office with tears in her eyes, around November 2023. He reportedly replied, “That’s all propaganda.”

4. Inside the Mind of the Influencer Who Thinks You Should Be Rude to Waitstaff

By Claire Guinan

Meet Courtney Palmer: Housewife, aspiring TikTok influencer, and self-proclaimed princess. She’s the face behind “Princess Treatment,” a newly viral, hyper-feminine philosophy that’s equal parts self-care, submissiveness, and delusion.

3. Caitlin Clark Exposes the WNBA’s Officiating Problems…Again

By Alyssa Mercante

Since getting drafted first overall by the Indiana Fever in the 2024 WNBA draft, Caitlin Clark has sparked both controversy and conversation about in-game fouls and preferential treatment. She’s a boon for the league and will likely go down as one of the best basketball players of all time—but she’s also seemingly getting rocked by rival players in nearly every match. Tuesday night’s game between the Indiana Fever and Connecticut Sun proved, once again, that the league really doesn’t know how to handle Clark’s talent or the way players react to her.

2. Megyn Kelly Gets a Taste of the Conservative Women Audience She’s Spent Years Cultivating

By Kylie Cheung

On Monday, Kelly tweeted that women should be financially independent. And her base, who she’s trained to despise any drop of perceived feminism, went for her throat.

1. Georgia Police Jailed Woman for Miscarriage and Performed Autopsy on Her Miscarried Fetus

By Kylie Cheung

The 24-year-old was found unconscious and bleeding near her apartment building. She was arrested and charged with “concealing the death of another person” and “abandonment of a dead body.”

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